friday on my mind

In 2007, producer Michael Robertson and director Andrew Traucki brought us horror/thriller croc feature Black Water and with it a model for low-budget, genre Australian movies. With shark film The Reef they take this one step further with a clever online strategy from the set and before to reel in audiences before cameras even rolled. Here they guide us through the new waters of online marketing.

Fresh back from a full-house premiere at Toronto International Film Festival where Jucy* was listed in the ‘Top 15 Films to Watch’, director Louise Alston (All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane) talks about the rise of the “womance” buddy genre and what it takes to get a second feature up in the current international climate.

Following the international success of Happy Feet with George Miller, Australia’s Animal Logic has sunk its talons into producing the Zack Snyder directed action animation The Legend of the Guardian: the Owls of Ga’Hoole.

Simon Whiteley will talk us though the design of key characters and environments to create this spectacular air display.

Special guest:
• Simon Whiteley – production designer (Babe, The Matrix, Happy Feet, Legend of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga’Hoole)

On November 4, ABC TV and writer/director Peter Duncan will launch new drama series Rake, chronicling the cases of Cleaver Green (Richard Roxburgh), a criminal defence lawyer who defends “bigamists to cannibals and everything in between”.

With a character inspired by the notorious real-life barrister and author Charles Waterstreet, we look at the rise of the antihero protagonist (think bad boy contemporaries House, Breaking Bad and the BBC’s upcoming Sherlock) and how to build empathy with them.

They say the first casualty of war is truth… The Child, the Death and The Truth*, directed by German journalist and filmmaker Esther Schapira, investigates the shooting and editing of a TV news item that shook the world – the death of a Palestinian boy and the wounding of his father when caught in a deadly crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters. What unfolds is an intriguing examination of news practice and reportage in the age of celebrity.

– How is the relationship of trust established between newsroom and viewer?
– How are new technologies changing the images we see?
– What are the increasing pressures on networks, journalists and documentary filmmakers alike with the rise of social media?

Writer/director Shirley Barrett talks about her career from the 1996 Cannes Caméra d’Or winning Love Serenade to opening night film from the Sydney Film Festival, South Solitary, and the delicate craft in balancing drama and comedy.

As her new show Spirited launches on Foxtel, and with a slate of new projects in the pipeline, we talk to screenwriter Jacquelin Perske (Love My Way, Star Wars TV) about the creation of TV drama that is rich in character detail, high in ambition and epic in scope – and how the writer can take a front seat role in steering its development.

Internationally celebrated screenwriter Stuart Beattie (Collateral, Pirates of the Caribbean) talks about his directorial debut Tomorrow, When the War Began and what it takes to make films in which people and studios want to invest.

As former head of the Film Finance Corporation, Brian Rosen spent years deep amongst deal negotiations for Australian films. Now working on his own at an international level, he will talk about what the likes of Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment want when they consider deals with Australian projects.

The ’80s was the era of the “historical miniseries”, and particularly the political one (remember The Dismissal?). Now, with Hawke having taken centre stage, and the Whitlam-esque Cleo to come, producer Richard Keddie (Hawke, Curtin) looks at the rise and rise of the period telemovie and the real-life aspects that make them so powerful.